It's cold out, so I'll pull out the two thoughts I've been saving for a cold day.

Thought #1

We were made for these times. Money quote: The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and ( Read more... )

A couple of blog articles I found interesting and worth linking to.

1) In which somebody succeeds at debunking John C. Wright on science. Humorous quote: "For example if I say ‘if you hit yourself in the face with a sledgehammer you will break your face’ and you then DON’T hit yourself in the face with a sledgehammer then the fact that your face ( Read more... )

1) A very interesting article: why you should stop believing in evolution. TL;DR version = one believes in religion and comprehends science.

2) Yet another Republican-led House panel finds no misconduct or attempt to misled in Benghazi affair.

A twofer from Gin and Tacos:

3) a lack of constraint. Constraint is used in the technical sense to ( Read more... )

Some of my readers, especially those of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy bent (BTW, note for my controller - I'm still waiting for my check) may remember the case of Margaret Mary Vojtko. She's the 83-year-old adjunct professor at Duquesne University who died in poverty. Well, as this article points out, more than a little of her problems were self- ( Read more... )

Here in Chicago, it's been raining for a good 24 hours, most of that in the form of downpours. If it can flood, it did. This includes the street in front of my house, which delayed my arrival to work by a couple of hours ( Read more... )

So, apparently New York City is experiencing a wave of bed bugs. Various sources, including Glen Reynolds, think that bringing back DDT will fix the problem.

Wrong.

See, as this person says, bed bugs developed a resistance to DDT way back in the 1950s. Not only that, but now we learn that bed bugs are still nearly 100% resistant to DDT. A ( Read more... )

There are days that I dispair over the loss of critical thinking in America. Today is one of them. For some reason, a 2003 scientific paper about methane gas eruptions sinking ships is back in the news. (Hat tip to Rand SimbergNow, yes, if your ship happens to be right over an eruption of methane hydrates, the ship could sink. And yes, these ( Read more... )

Chiefly because I like to sleep as late as possible in the mornings, I don't usually read my morning paper until I get home from work. Thus, it wasn't until last night that I read a fascinating article in the Chicago Tribune about REM sleep behavior disorder. People who suffer from this disorder will violently act out their dreams, including ( Read more... )

So, over on John Scalzi’s blog, he’s running one of his “Big Ideas” pieces, which plug the “Big Idea” behind an author’s book. This particular Big Idea is the conflict between science and superstition. The possessor of the big idea, Melinda Snodgrass, has taken the conflict and created a novel positing a real-live war between the “forces of ( Read more... )

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that Americans at least are horrible at assessing risk. I think a major contributing factor is what I will refer to as "statistical illiteracy" or the inability to understand data presented statistically ( Read more... )